Precious Metal Prices

Precious metals explained

A precious metal is a rare, naturally occurring metallic chemical element of high economic value, which is not radioactive (excluding natural polonium, radium, actinium and protactinium). Chemically, the precious metals are less reactive than most elements, have high lustre, are softer or more ductile, and have higher melting points than other metals. Historically, precious metals were important as currency, but are now regarded mainly as investment and industrial commodities. Gold, silver, platinum, and palladium each have an ISO 4217 currency code.
The best-known precious metals are gold and silver. While both have industrial uses, they are better known for their uses in art, jewellery and coinage. Other precious metals include the platinum group metals: ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum, of which platinum is the most widely traded. [1] During the last decades, the use of platinum, palladium and ruthenium as chemical catalysts has steadily risen.The demand for precious metals is driven not only by their practical use, but also by their role as investments and a store of value. Historically, precious metals have commanded much higher prices than common industrial metals. In January 2009, gold was about $840.00/troy ounce and silver was about $11.00/troy ounce, compared to copper at $0.11/troy ounce and nickel at $0.36/troy ounce.
In the early part of the 21st century, precious metal prices rose significantly and recycling precious metals became more and more attractive. Some companies have been doing recycling for many years, such as Sabin Metal Corporation (since 1945).

Precious metal investment

Precious metal investment

Thursday, 6 February 2014

Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin. All anyone is talking about these days is bitcoin.
OK, so maybe not everyone is talking about bitcoin, but having had
its breakout year in 2013 (rising 6,000% in value) bitcoin, and by
extension the dozens of other cryptocurrencies which have sprung up in
the last 12 months, are now the topic of conversation around dinner
tables, in pubs and at the water cooler.
I've heard lots of people say they were going to buy bitcoin, while
the more knowledgeable were already planning on getting into litecoin,
dogecoin, vertcoin, sexcoin or whatever the cryptocurrency-of-the-week
was - but most people never took the plunge and actually bought some.
The problem is that actually getting on the cryptocurrency ladder is not that easy.
There are no bitcoin notes you can go to a bank and swap for your
pounds, euro or dollars, so how do you go about getting your virtual
hands on some?Bitcoin mining?

You can of course mine some bitcoin - a process we have covered in
detail here - but unless you are willing to spend thousands on a mining
rig, it'll take too long to mine enough bitcoin to do anything with it.
Most other cryptocurrencies are easier to mine, but if you really
don't want to get into mining, then you can swap cold hard cash for
bitcoins without too much hassle, and from there the cryptocurrency
world is your oyster.Bitcoin - the gateway drug
While it is possible to buy other cryptocurrencies like dogecoin or litecoin using real world currencies, for those of us in Europe, it is not that easy.

If you are looking to get into cryptocurrencies to make a quick
profit, then bitcoin probably isn't the one to start with, but in order
to explore the nether regions of cryptocurrency land, then the first
step has to be to buy some bitcoin.But bitcoin is too expensive

Don't worry that a single bitcoin currently costs over £500, you
don't have to buy a whole one, you can buy fractions of a bitcoin
through online exchanges to match the amount of real money you want to
invest.Using an exchange
There are two ways of buying bitcoin in the UK. One is straightforward, the other is not.

The not-so-straightforward method involves
registering with a cryptocurrency exchange - the most well-known of
which is probably Mt. Gox. While these exchanges operated for years
without needing to know your identity, they now do and the process is
both tedious (scanning, emailing and verifying identity documents) and
time consuming.
Only some of these exchanges are accessible to UK residents and your
bank will charge you a fee (up to £10) for wire transfers, meaning this
is really only an option for those getting seriously into the
cryptocurrency business
The straightforward way of getting on the bitcoin
ladder is by using one of a growing number of UK-based services which
allow you to pay using a bank transfer, Barclay's PingIt service or
Natwest's Instant payment service.

If you're looking to buy bitcoins online, PAXFUL is the #1 source for bitcoins as it allows buying bitcoins by 100's of payment methods, such as MoneyGram, Western Union, PayPal, Credit Card and even exchanging your gift cards for bitcoins.